“Imagine a beautiful scene”. “Keep that image of beauty in your mind.” “Stop the mind-chatter with the lovely scene”. These were my cousin’s repeated admonitions, as she led us through our twice-weekly yoga class. She knew I was struggling with some worrying health issues in my family; and I was pretty sure she was reminding us of this for my benefit. I tried, but still wasn’t able to pick a single image and stick with it. Instead, my mind filled with a whole stream of lovely images, each tied to fond memories:
I stood before a field of white daisies with my husband, in the foothills around Mount Saint Helens, a snow-covered, live volcano in the State of Washington that remains a significant backdrop of my life in Oregon. I knew it before it blew its top in May of 1981—-at that time I heard the news on a radio, but was pretty incommunicado in the center of Borneo, worrying impotently about my parents in nearby Portland. I still feel a shock when I see the shape of the mountain these days—half its former size and glory, but still candy for the eyes. That day in the foothills, I could see this beloved mountain, smaller but still lovely, still active, behind the field of daisies blowing in the breeze.
My thoughts then turned to the image of these mountains from the city. Driving around the Terwilliger curves in Southwest Portland on a clear day, both Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Hood come into view. Brilliant white against a blue sky, St. Helens now has a curved, rounded appearance, Mt. Hood a pointy one; and there are other, smaller snow-covered peaks in between. In the foreground is the Willamette River; it meanders through downtown Portland skyscrapers, under its many appealing bridges, on its way to join the majestic Columbia River, which flows to the Pacific Ocean.
I then remembered images of my mother and sister in law, both at younger ages, posing in a field of pink and purple dahlias at a farm south of Portland. The dahlias formed a lush background, filling almost every part of the picture. The contented faces of these beloved women peered out of the loveliness. We’d taken a similar picture of my daughter, also at a younger age, posing in a garden of purple irises in Portland’s Japanese Garden. Besides her pretty and happy face, I could see the purple in her shirt perfectly matching the flowers that surrounded her. Then more recently, I’d taken another picture of my pseudo-step-sisters, as we took a break from our vigil at their father’s deathbed. We went to see the tulips in bloom, again south of Portland, row upon row of lovely tulips, each row a different color. Lovely lovely images all.
My thoughts then turned to Indonesia. I remembered lying in a hammock, under a tamarind tree on the isle of Alor, alternating between reading my book, gazing at the leaves above, and out at the sea off to my left. The tamarind tree shaded me from the tropical sun, and its leaves formed constantly changing patterns as the wind blew them softly back and forth, and as my hammock gently swayed. I could see other small islands in the distance, including another volcano—we remained in the Earth’s Ring of Fire—and I could hear the sounds of the surf nearby. Besides the beauty of my surroundings, I remember the welcome relaxation from the world of work.
This brought me back to Bogor, where my office was for some 15 years. I visualized the lovely row of tall heliconia that some kind gardener had planted in front of my wall-sized office windows (my office was called ‘the fishbowl’ by more privacy-seeking colleagues). Tiny spider-hunters flitted around in the flowers all day, and I could see squirrels frolicking in the trees above. Nearby lay the experimental forest adjacent to our office complex, the forest I drove through every morning. The sunbeams filtered through the trees, soothing my spirit every morning, preparing me for my day of work.
And then I imagined my days in Long Segar, a village in eastern Borneo. I saw myself sitting on a bench in a little hut, looking down at the brown and winding river below. It moved slowly, bearing an occasional bit of driftwood or a log that had escaped the clutches of the timber company upstream. The river’s steep banks varied in their length, depending on the water level. When the water was low, we used two or three notched trees end to end, requiring considerable balancing ability, to descend through the mud and reach the water’s edge. The little floating rafts that dotted the shoreline provided a place to wash clothes , access drinking water (and…they served as potties); pointed canoes jutted out downriver from each raft, in a fan-like pattern. The rafts became objects of pleasure for me, as every evening, after a hot and sweaty day—Long Segar was right on the equator—I would shed my clothes, don my sarong, and join my Dayak family in a shared bath. We could jump into the river to cool off, to rinse off; we did our laundry there, and we relaxed and exchanged news of the day with each other and with our neighbours who shared the raft. In the mornings, there was often fog, lending a surreal aspect to the scene. Other times clouds above warned of yet another tropical downpour. The river provided a huge variety of images but was always a source of joy. My son, an artist, painted me a picture, a watercolor, of this river; it hangs in my office, reminding me of this lovely place.
Something brought me back to the near-present, and I saw the linear park that runs along one side of Dryden Lake in the township (Dryden) of which my current home, Etna, is a part. The park, now a path, follows an abandoned railway line. In the fall it forms a tunnel of brilliant trees, sporting the foliage for which the US Northeast is famous. The leaves are red and green, yellow and orange, brown and golden, casting their reflected light on the path below. To each side is water, the lake on one side, and a string of small pools on the other. Birds congregate there—red winged blackbirds, Baltimore orioles, Canada geese, purple herons, a whole variety of birdlife—and in the water, I see turtles basking on logs in the sun.
My cousin’s admonition soothed my spirit, and has stayed with me well beyond the yoga lesson. Remembering beauty is a healthy pastime, I think.